Philip Zeid looks back at his adventures in the Royal Air Force and as a civilian in exotic places including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Liberia in this memoir that drives home a point: "You Never Know."

For instance, when he was fifteen years old, his parents took him to an optometrist who prescribed him glasses, but he refused to wear them. If he had done so, he would have never been able to apply to be a pilot in the Royal Air Force, and his entire life would have been different.

Another time, he was about to become a tea planter in India when partition riots...